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The game

This game is based on a movie named "Darkman". The story following is from the actual game:
Dr Peyton Westlake was a brillant scientist who was working on a new synthetic skin ideal for burns sufferers. Taking old photographs of burn victims he was able to mould a mask using a computer to recreate their faces. Unfortunaly the skin was photosensitive and could not last over ninety nine minutes on the light! An evil gang lead by Durant broke into the lab looking for an important document. They killed Peyton assistant and attempting to leave no witness... They blew up the lab and Peyton with it... But he survived!! Horribly burnt, he was given a new surgical technique which made him unable to feel any pain. Unfortunaly the treatment had side effects. He had violent mood swing and adrenalin flowed through his body unchecked giving him great strengh! Peyton escaped from the hospital and became Darkman. Help Darkman control his rage and gain his revenge!!!
The gameplay of this movie is not that great.To hit an enemy for example, you need to be very close of the enemy.

The TAS

  • Emulator used: FCEUX 2.2.2
  • Aims for fastest Any% completion
PS:I've used TASeditor a lot

Generalities

Acceleration

Running on the ground makes you gain 30 of horizontal speed per frame. Moving in the air makes you gain 5 of horizontal speed per frame.

Speed

There is three kind of floor you can run on. I'll give them two names: the slow floors and the fast floors When you run on the slow floor, the max speed you can get by running is 512. When you run on the fast floors, the max speed is 768. Moving in the air has a max speed of about 1200(Don't remember the exact number, since it was never reached). However, when you land on a floor, the speed is reset to the max speed if you were moving faster. An exception to this is the moving platforms. Landing on a moving platform reset your speed to 0. The max speed of the moving platform is also 768. When you jump through a slow platform, you don't land on it, but your speed is still reset to 512!
When you're near enough of an enemy, your speed is reset to 0.

Climbing:

When you climb, you have two options: You can jump from it to the opposite direction, or climb to the top or down. You can't jump from the wall and land on top of the wall you wanted to climb. So you need to climb all the way to the top if you need to climb the wall. The climbing walls have very weird physics, more detail in specific level comments.

Hitting:

Hitting, as mentioned early, is very hard to do, since you have to be so close of the enemy to actually hit them. There is something I used in the run is running to an enemy walking away from me and hit him from behind and make them fall from the platform. This is a frame perfect hit. The last character has 2 attack animation and you can't choose which one you choose to do: either shoot a gun or hit with your fists. if you're too far of an enemy OR no of your ball still on the screen, you shoot the gun. Else, you hit with your fists. And finally, the third character has a special bazooka that has a recoil when shooting. This recoil is abused in order to accelerate much faster from a standing point.

Specific level comments:

Level 1

I've jumped out of the rope intentionally since you are faster in the air than on the rope. Nothing more to add.

Level 2

Nothing to comment

Level 3

If I didn't hit the enemy, he would have hit me twice, losing a lot of frames. If I waited and tried to jump over him and directly on the wall, the balloon would kill me before I reach the wall(Yeah, balloons OKO you...). The balloon of the rope section is unavoidable. This level is the first level to use a cheap hit to make an enemy fall. Plus, after that enemy, I accidentally make a glitch that makes me climb inside the wall so you're a little bit more on the left. This and the enemy is used to propel me toward the left quickly(instead of a almost standing run + avoiding or killing the enemy). I didn't jump after the last flame because a balloon later would block my path.

Level 4

It's one of the four "boringest" levels in the game. It's a picture minigame where you need to do the paparazzi and capture a certain person the more often possible. But instead of going 60 seconds of that, I waste all all the ammo and "complete" the levels in 19 seconds.

Level 5

I've been able to climb very quickly on the left side of the "wall" by jumping right over the enemy(being close to anenemy in the air reset your speed) and going left after the reset. Going up is faster than going down since going down invovle climbing an another wall + waiting the enemy to go away. Going up avoid all those headaches. Later in the level, I jumped over an enemy without slowing down, then jumped over an enemy and reseted the speed to 0. If I didn't do this, either I fight the enemy, or I fall in the water...

Level 6

I've stopped climbing somewhere in this level to make only one of the two platform appear. Then I continue so I can land on the first platform and quickly jump on the 2nd platform and so on. I've already made the two platforms appear so it was impossible to jump from the first platform to the second!

Level 7

I'm not even sure if I killed the guy or not. But the fight was unavoidable, since jump is disabled during the fight.

Level 8

ONe of the two autoscroll game. It's relatively hard to avoid all the obstacles AND collecting so much things things.

Level 9

Picture minigame, skipped again

Level 10

I've stopped since the clown can throw something can OKO you. By stopping, I avoided that OKO thingy. He's also the bazooka guy. As you can see, I shoot a ball every time I move from a standing stance.

Level 11

I didn't shoot immediatly after the balloon since it's slower. Level 12: Nothing to comment here Level 13 Picture minigame, skipped again

Level 14 + Level 15 + Level 16

These three levels were tricky since you can take a little more path possibility. On the level 15, I've already succeded to get immediatly bhind the ninja and make him hit me and propel me to the left. But after some major change in the earlier levels, I haven't been able to redo it. It seems that THIS ninja depends on the time you reach him. It's a possible improvement to this movie.

Level 17

Autoscroll level that's also hard to collect AND avoid. I've collected the more thing I could collect without getting hit.

Level 18

Picture minigame, skipped again

Level 19

The most weird thing of this game. If you didn't collect that potion on the left, the third platform wouldn't even move...

Level 20

The very first jump of this level is frame precise, one before or after you touch that machine and die. He doesn't jump high enough to clear the enemy without his speed getting reset.

Level 21

Nothing to comment here

Level 22

I've succeded to jump over the enemy without slowing down since he's crouching.

Last words:

I hope that you liked this run I've made from the past days! Shoot any questions or comments you've got on the forum. :)

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I jumped off the rope on the first frame that allowed me to land on the top platform. EDIT: It's fine. Can I just ask, which RAM addresses do you have?
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The main addresses I used are speeds during the TASing. I've found other, such as position, timer counter(useless), potion counter, picture counter(useless). The explanation behind this sentence:I went "too fast" during the first moving platform and that all change the rest of the first level. It's because when you jump at this platform, you are at a X position. Because of your speed, you can jump at that X position. But If I do it in my movie, because of my higher speed, the X position where I can jump is Y which is more on the left than you. If I wait ONE frame, I simply can't jump since I'd move to X+1 position, which makes me fall of the platform. You intend to improve it? Or to continue testing?^^ I intended to put them in the submission, but I didn't since I don't know how to makes tables...
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niamek wrote:
The main addresses I used are speeds during the TASing. I've found other, such as position, timer counter(useless), potion counter, picture counter(useless). The explanation behind this sentence:I went "too fast" during the first moving platform and that all change the rest of the first level. It's because when you jump at this platform, you are at a X position. Because of your speed, you can jump at that X position. But If I do it in my movie, because of my higher speed, the X position where I can jump is Y which is more on the left than you. If I wait ONE frame, I simply can't jump since I'd move to X+1 position, which makes me fall of the platform. You intend to improve it? Or to continue testing?^^ I intended to put them in the submission, but I didn't since I don't know how to makes tables...
I'm going to try and improve it as much as possible but I'm a bit stuck in level 3 at the moment.
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Good luck improving the 3rd level. The main improvements are in the 3rd level mainly. And not by much: The first section surely, then the balloon rope.
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36k frames and 3.6k rerecords, that doesn’t look too good lol. The game bored me and I didn’t watch the whole run so I won’t vote.
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ALAKTORN wrote:
36k frames and 3.6k rerecords
for a 10 minute game? That's not that bad. Don't really see how the rerecord count matters, but I digress....
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arandomgameTASer wrote:
ALAKTORN wrote:
36k frames and 3.6k rerecords
for a 10 minute game? That's not that bad. Don't really see how the rerecord count matters, but I digress....
Well SMB warp has 9739 for 5 minutes and that game is just pressing right (I think).
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Sorry, I change my vote to Yes for vault. And I will recheck it.
ALAKTORN wrote:
36k frames and 3.6k rerecords, that doesn’t look too good lol. The game bored me and I didn’t watch the whole run so I won’t vote.
About the rerecords, there is a bug in 2.2.2 version. Thread #15609: My rerecord count is not right
Noxxa
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ALAKTORN wrote:
Well SMB warp has 9739 for 5 minutes and that game is just pressing right (I think).
I like how your metric of comparison for rerecord count is literally one of the most optimized movies on the site. And no, that run is definitely not just pressing right. If it were, it wouldn't have been improved and published over 15 times. 2D Mario games generally have quite a bit more movement complexity and tricks than similar 2D platformers, and SMB1 is no exception.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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mtvf1 wrote:
Sorry, I change my vote to Yes for vault. And I will recheck it.
ALAKTORN wrote:
36k frames and 3.6k rerecords, that doesn’t look too good lol. The game bored me and I didn’t watch the whole run so I won’t vote.
About the rerecords, there is a bug in 2.2.2 version. Thread #15609: My rerecord count is not right
He was using TASEditor, where it isn't affected by the bug. (as far as I can see)
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mtvf1 wrote:
Sorry, I change my vote to Yes for vault. And I will recheck it.
That's okay, mtvf1. ^^ I myself did a mistake with the movie file because I stopped it later than I had to.(Between, when the movie file will be changed?) But I still have to end the movie 13 seconds later than the time claimed in both movie: yours and Tompa. Since the timing were different, without checking carefully, it was easy to make mistake. :)
Mothrayas wrote:
ALAKTORN wrote:
Well SMB warp has 9739 for 5 minutes and that game is just pressing right (I think).
I like how your metric of comparison for rerecord count is literally one of the most optimized movies on the site. And no, that run is definitely not just pressing right. If it were, it wouldn't have been improved and published over 15 times. 2D Mario games generally have quite a bit more movement complexity and tricks than similar 2D platformers, and SMB1 is no exception.
I'd like to point out that this game is not that hard to advance TAS quickly: 4 pictures of 19 seconds + the story scenes that comes with them is about 1 minute and 20 seconds... Plus the two autoscrollers... That's a lot of time that's easy to TAS without adding a lot of rerecords. I'd say TASing Darkman is pretty similar to TASing SMW if we remove ALL the tricks except the 49 speed of SMW: You manage to get the highest speed possible, then go through the majority of the level. TASing SMW like this is very fast and doesn't require a lot of rerecording. Also, this game has a lot of run to the right. But, there is things to consider: Avoiding enemies, avoiding balloons, etc. So I'd say this game is not mostly run right for justice as it seems. Look at the first level of the pink t shirted guy, at the start I managed to climb quickly on the left side of the "tree". I could climb on the tree or pass the enemy without climbing. Look at the first level of the last character, I ran left to climb a wall instead of going only left. Look at the first level of the bazooka guy, I could land on the balloon instead of waiting of the clown attack. Look at the small glitch of the 3rd level. So, this game is not only running right for justice.
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niamek wrote:
Look at the small glitch of the 3rd level.
Do you know what causes this glitch to occur?
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3600 rerecords in 36000 frames is 6 rerecords per second, still far above this list. Re-record counts are too much of a snap judgement to be trusted: They're easy to inflate, especially in BizHawk where you can just change it in a text file. Game complexity changes how often re-records are needed, sometimes there are a lot of cutscenes or text advancing which usually doesn't require more than 1 or 2 re-records per scene/box, sometimes people just get lucky and are able to get complicated tricks done really quickly, some people work off of just one file and do multiple attempts of a game within that same file, leading to a much higher count than was actually used for the final run, there could be problems with the emulator in determining re-record counts... Anyway. What I'm wondering is why the re-record count dropped to 3400 in the updated run: User movie #18627730843176147 I haven't watched either run yet so maybe there's an obvious reason I'm missing.
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warmCabin wrote:
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Samsara wrote:
3600 rerecords in 36000 frames is 6 rerecords per second, still far above this list. Re-record counts are too much of a snap judgement to be trusted: They're easy to inflate, especially in BizHawk where you can just change it in a text file. Game complexity changes how often re-records are needed, sometimes there are a lot of cutscenes or text advancing which usually doesn't require more than 1 or 2 re-records per scene/box, sometimes people just get lucky and are able to get complicated tricks done really quickly, some people work off of just one file and do multiple attempts of a game within that same file, leading to a much higher count than was actually used for the final run, there could be problems with the emulator in determining re-record counts... Anyway. What I'm wondering is why the re-record count dropped to 3400 in the updated run: User movie #18627730843176147 I haven't watched either run yet so maybe there's an obvious reason I'm missing.
I used the wrong movie file when I corrected the first level. Instead of redoing it on the correct movie file, I copied the input that were missing fro the good movie file to the movie file that I used.
Do you know what causes this glitch to occur?
Honestly, no. The walls that you can climb o it has weird physics.
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Samsara wrote:
They're easy to inflate, especially in BizHawk where you can just change it in a text file.
That’s actually a great feature. Honest TASers will use that to merge rerecords from different movie files into the final one, or merge rerecords from different TASers in a team TAS. That’s what me and David are doing for SM64DS.
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niamek wrote:
Samsara wrote:
3600 rerecords in 36000 frames is 6 rerecords per second, still far above this list. Re-record counts are too much of a snap judgement to be trusted: They're easy to inflate, especially in BizHawk where you can just change it in a text file. Game complexity changes how often re-records are needed, sometimes there are a lot of cutscenes or text advancing which usually doesn't require more than 1 or 2 re-records per scene/box, sometimes people just get lucky and are able to get complicated tricks done really quickly, some people work off of just one file and do multiple attempts of a game within that same file, leading to a much higher count than was actually used for the final run, there could be problems with the emulator in determining re-record counts... Anyway. What I'm wondering is why the re-record count dropped to 3400 in the updated run: User movie #18627730843176147 I haven't watched either run yet so maybe there's an obvious reason I'm missing.
I used the wrong movie file when I corrected the first level. Instead of redoing it on the correct movie file, I copied the input that were missing fro the good movie file to the movie file that I used.
Do you know what causes this glitch to occur?
Honestly, no. The walls that you can climb o it has weird physics.
I assumed you were talking about the balloon not appearing (the one that changing the first level gets it so that it doesn't happen), the climbing inside the wall is because you grabbed onto it at the bottom of the screen (I think)
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Yeah it, I know it happens like that, but I don't know for the why.
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New improvement in level 1. Now 88 frames saved in level 1.
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thelegendarymudkip wrote:
New improvement in level 1. Now 88 frames saved in level 1.
Good job. Good luck if you’re gonna complete the run.
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thelegendarymudkip wrote:
New improvement in level 1. Now 88 frames saved in level 1.
Considering the mistakes made in the start of the movie and everythings that can improve the start of the movie, I'll cancel it finally. If the legendarymudkip ever finishes it, so be it, that's what mistakes bring! If not, I'll edo it later this year, once I finish university. I've learned a lot of things. If I do, I'll post WIPs in the forum before submitting. Niamek
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